


keep me warm, keep me cold, (keep me)

by insertcleveracejoke



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotionally Intelligent Vulcans AU, Its Actually Kinda Inspiring, Jim Has Chronic Immunodeficiencies Due To Growing Up In Space, Jim Was Raised By An Entire Starfleet Ship AU, M/M, Original Alien Species - Freeform, Somehow Continues To Be A Little Shit Anyway
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 11:54:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21814081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insertcleveracejoke/pseuds/insertcleveracejoke
Summary: Vulcan is hot. Jim already knew that, and it's not like he hasn't been to hotter planets- the Engineering section alone might be hotter than this in a very bad day- but it's still a shock to go from the relatively mild temperature of the ship to that. He's suddenly grateful for the replicated white, loose clothes that Nurse Church had given him. They are currently the only thing between him and heat stroke.The sand feels weird, too, strangely unstable after a lifetime of navigating the solid floors of a spaceship. There is even wind. It seems to like to play with his hair.
Relationships: James T. Kirk & Leonard "Bones" McCoy, James T. Kirk & Original Male Character(s), James T. Kirk/Spock
Comments: 22
Kudos: 78





	1. Prologue - It starts like this.

**Author's Note:**

> Canon is but a sandbox, and I have a shovel.
> 
> I subscribe to the headcanon I saw floating around tumblr that, because of some copper sciencey stuff, Spock should blush in teal. Partially because that's cute as hell, and partially because I'm uncomfy with writing a character played by a Jewish actor as blushing green.

The event that made this universe different happened many, many years before the Vulcan who would come to be called Selek ever stepped foot in it.

Many, many years after Surak's teachings bore fruit, a different Vulcan looked at her peers and said: _this is not logical_. She had realized that to suppress all emotions was as detrimental as allowing them to control all of one's actions.

Her name was T'Sevil.

She had died too early in the universe that Spock came from. Vulcan had not managed to benefit from her wisdom. When Selek realized that, he silently mourned, for he thought he might have made less mistakes had he been born to a universe like this.

In a way, he was right. The Spock that was born in this world was by no means perfect, and his life was in no way devoid of errors, but he was always certain of himself and his place in the universe in a way that no other Spock was.

T'Sevil's wisdom reached out in ripples, allowing something beautiful to happen.

Centuries later, it also starts like this.

Sarek, the Vulcan Ambassador, meets a human woman. Her name is Amanda. She smiles at him, raises her hand in a salute from his world, and Sarek doesn't fall in love, not quite, but the seed of it has been planted.

A year later, he loves her with everything he is, and what he is is a Vulcan. By some miracle, she feels the same for him. Because Amanda loves her husband, she adapts to this different world. Because his husband loves her, he adapts to her needs, too.

They have a child. Perhaps to say "have" is too light a word, for they worked so hard so that Spock could be born. The Vulcan that handed the baby to Amanda called him _a miracle;_ Amanda called him _my son_. Sarek leaned in to see their child, who had his mother's brown eyes, and said_: so human_. It was a compliment.

Across the galaxy, another child is born. Winona Kirk has no time to celebration, for the day that brought life to her youngest son brought death to her husband, but she still holds her baby close.

George Kirk is dead. Her son is not.

She will make sure it stays that way.

Spock grows in Vulcan, loved dearly. His mother is human; he is not mocked for that. She holds him as often as she can; his father keeps a hand on Spock's shoulder whenever a single soul dares to say something. Most of all, he is cared for. Spock is taught not to repress his feelings, but to seek to understand them. He is a happier child here than in any other world.

Jim Kirk is raised in a Starfleet ship, for his mother would not leave him behind. He grows loved. He grows motherless. She is always in the same ship as he is, but never in the same wavelength. Jim is always safe even in danger- he knows she will come for him. The entire ship is his family. But that's not the same as having a present mother, and his body, born and raised in space, cannot stand to be on a planet for too long.

They meet on Vulcan.

* * *

It starts like this.

Jim is fourteen years old and this is the first time he visits Vulcan.

He has visited other worlds before, so many of them, but this is the first time in a good while that he's going to be on-planet. His mother had worried for weeks that lead up to this shore leave. The CMO Sally has determined that he is not at risk as long as he takes the right hypos and doesn't spend too long down there, though, and Winona, for all of her flaws, has never been a helicopter parent.

Yeoman Linda is the one that takes him by the hand to the transporters. Jim would have squirmed, but he doesn't frequently see human children anymore; he does not know that he is considered too old to be holding hands with a responsible adult. He likes the touch. Linda lets go of his hand as he gets closer to the transporters: there will be another officer down on the planet to supervise him.

"Have fun, Jimmy", the engineer says, and waits for Jim to smile at him before beaming him down.

Vulcan is _hot_. Jim already knew that, and it's not like he hasn't been to hotter planets- the Engineering section alone might be hotter than this in a very bad day- but it's still a shock to go from the relatively mild temperature of the ship to that. He's suddenly grateful for the replicated white, loose clothes that Nurse Church had given him. They are currently the only thing between him and heat stroke.

The sand feels weird, too, strangely unstable after a lifetime of navigating the solid floors of a spaceship. There is even wind. It seems to like to play with his hair.

"Hi, Jim, missed me?," said Jack, from the Science section. Ze bared sharp teeth at Jim in a smile for a moment before gesturing, _gimme_. "Where are your hypos?"

"Good afternoon, Jack, yes, I've had a good morning, thank you for asking," Jim said grinning. "Here you go."

Hypos, Jim has determined years ago, were a creation of the medical department of his ship specifically to punish him for being born. He grimaces and pulls away from the needle, but the necessary immuno boosters are already in his system.

"Why do you feel the need to punish me?," Jim complains, rubbing his neck.

"Because I looove you."

"Do you, though? Do you really?"

Ze laughs, putting a hand on Jim's shoulder. Jack's skin is cold, as ze is somewhat reptilian, and the human leans into the touch.

"What would you like to see while we're down here?"

"How long do I have with you?"

"About two hours. Yeoman Linda will be here to relieve me after that."

"And how relieved you will be. I wanna see the market, I've heard there's a ton of cool shit, and mom gave me some credits so I can get myself something." Jim frowned at the sky. "Which will probably be a sunhat."

Jack shrugs.

The marker is full of people, most of which are, obviously, Vulcan. In their loose clothes, they kind of remind Jim of Earth's Arabia, although, having never really seen it, he doesn't know how accurate that assessment is. He starts humming Arabian Nights under his breath.

Jack gives him an exasperated look.

"What? It's a classic."

"One day I'm gonna leave you in one of those planets," ze informs him.

Jim winces, and Jack looks immediately regretful of his word choice.

"No you won't," he says anyway, because that's what he does, "you loooove me."

Jack smiles tightly.

"You got me there."

Taking a look around as to avoid looking zir in the eyes, Jim realizes one very important thing: when he was reading about how much cool shit was here, he didn't know exactly how _cool_ they were.

"Jack. Jack, I think I need a 3D chess set."

"What, so you can slay people in three dimensions now?"

Jim grins in a way that makes his teeth look almost as sharp as Jack's.

"Exactly."

Ze sighs in amused exasperation, a hand on Jim's shoulder. "Fine, just don't make too many officers cry, alright?"

"No promises."

Alien though ze is, ze is still not very good at hiding zir smile. "Will you be alright if I leave you by yourself for fifteen minutes?"

It is not a surprise. Jack's home planet has a similar climate to Vulcan's, and there are probably some things here that are very close to what ze is used to. Jim has foreseen this development, and he is fourteen years old, so there's no lie in his answer. "Yeah, sure. I'll comm Linda if it gets that late."

"Thank you, Jimmy."

Jack strokes his forehead with a clawed finger, in a gesture that Jim knows means deep affection for zir species. The teen doesn't flinch. He knows Jack wouldn't hurt him, even on accident. And then ze is gone.

The fabric wrapped around Jim's shoulders is a little suffocating, and he adjusts it without having to think much about it. Without Jack's cool temperature, it suddenly feels much hotter. Maybe it's Jack's comment, maybe it's the dry and hot atmosphere, the people who surround Jim in every side, but the sand feels suddenly even more unstable under his sandals. The wind, which had felt playful before, started unnerving him.

He thinks briefly about going back to the ship and telling Linda that she won't need to sacrifice part of her shore leave with him, but it'll be a good while before he's allowed to be on planet again, and he might not ever come back to Vulcan. Jim also suspects Linda would be disappointed.

Sweat trickles down his back and neck, only most of it being absorbed by the clothes. It's a sad moment to remember that Vulcans don't sweat. He can feel the sunburn forming on his forehead and nose, the top of his cheeks, and wishes he had thought of bringing a hat. Jim can already hear Sally going on about taking more care of his skin, which would be less unnerving if her species didn't eat mostly leather.

"Hello", says someone, and Jim jumps. It is surprisingly startling to hear such a human greeting out of nowhere.

It becomes no less strange as Jim turns around.

The one who has greeted him is a Vulcan kid, probably as old as Jim, although the human isn't all that sure about how young Vulcans aged. In them, the common bowl cut doesn't even look so strange, perhaps because he's wearing a pale blue veil over it. It frames their face well. They're the only Vulcan wearing a veil in the entire market, and maybe it shouldn't be so strange, but it is. It feels human.

Their face looks like something out of one of the 20th century novels that K'Lab'tur smuggled him. Jim feels like he should be swooning.

"Life long and prosper," he answers, his hand forming a ta'al.

The Vulcan- is that right?- blushes a little. Jim isn't sure why he expected it to be green when he knows that the copper in their blood would show like this- teal. It's… pretty cute.

"Peace and long life," they say. "I am Spock, son of Sarek."

"My name is Jim Kirk."

Spock is a male name, right? Jim's sure it is, and he knows they would have told him should a different pronoun be used.

"I apologize for asking," Spock continues, as Jim comes to the conclusion that yes, he is most likely a boy, a Vulcan would have told him otherwise, "but are you human?"

"It's the ears, isn't it?"

Spock only tilts his head, looking somehow both confused and amused. It's adorable. Like a small puppy.

"... Yeah, I'm human."

He bows his head in acknowledgement of Jim's answer, or so the human thinks until he realizes Spock is taking off his veil. Lithe hands come up to carefully unravel it from around his neck and then put it on Jim's, gently raising it above his head to protect him from the cruel sun.

"Wait, wh-"

"I believe my mother would say 'here you go'," Spock said, taking a step back. "... Here you go. I hope we meet again, Jim Kirk."

As suddenly as he had appeared, Spock leaves.

One of Jim's hands come up to touch the soft fabric of the veil without the input of his brain.

He's blushing. … Well. He can still blame it on the sun.


	2. Feet On The Ground

Jim is twenty-two years old when he leaves for the Academy.

He would have joined Starfleet earlier, perhaps, except Sally started angrily shoving a leather jacket in her own mouth whenever he started talking about it, and Jack teared up (was zir species even  _ supposed  _ to cry-), and Linda went all silent, and Ghara, who had joined the ship only seven years before but had somehow become another parental figure, started handing him So Now You're Going Through A Rebellious Phase pamphlets.

He loved his family, but they could be such  _ assholes  _ sometimes.

Of course, maybe he wouldn't have loved them as much if they weren't.

The problem wasn't that Jim was going to spend at the very least three years away. Even after  _ That Planet _ , he had traveled away from the ship, hitched rides on other Starfleet ships and jumped from civilian transport to research vehicles to actual pirate ships as if it were parkour. His family knew that he was able to take care of himself. They knew they couldn't keep him forever.

But they also knew that he was an  _ idiot  _ with chronic immunodeficiencies that was planning on spending years not only on-planet, where a single week was more than enough to get him infected with something Sally and Jack couldn't cure, but in the  _ Academy _ . It was like he was seeking the place most likely to be full of people. (Sally and Jack had started to think of most of those as  _ contaminants  _ years ago.)

The immunoboosters Jim took when he was on-planet were not meant for long-term use. He would have to keep jumping between space and the ground just to be able to make it to his finals. Reschedules of tests would have to be made constantly, his roommate would have to be a very understanding person not to smother him with their pillow during his sleep, and he would have to check every single meal to make sure it wasn't going to make his throat close.

Jim couldn't  _ wait _ , because he was crazy. Winona was this close to kidnapping him. The only thing that was keeping her from hijacking the ship and taking her son away was the manner in which Linda kept a subtle hand on her phaser whenever the older Kirk looked wistfully at the ship controls.

Also, Winona was pretty sure Jim would have somehow taken the ship back.

* * *

Jack has handed him three new scale coats in the past week- the stress makes zir shed more often, and ze is also the only person Jim knows that stress-sews. The coal feels cold and comforting against his skin as he reciprocates Linda's hug and listens to Sally's a million times repeated instructions in how to use the hypos. She knows that he's grown up knowing how to do that. It's her way to show that she cares.

Ghara stayed behind to make sure Winona doesn't come after Jim. He appreciates it. He also appreciates the lack of pamphlets.

"We love you", says Jack, whose species says that a lot more than humans do. Jim has learned to be comforted by the constant words. "Please take care of yourself."

"We're not telling you to make us proud," says Linda, "because you already have."

"If you die, I'm violating the laws of man and god to bring you back and kill you again," adds Sally. Good, old, affectionate Sally.

The entire ship is his family, but they don't all fit here, and he has said goodbye to all of them already. Jim leans into these three who are closest to his heart, allows Jack to stroke his forehead with a clawed finger and Linda to kiss his cheek, and beams at them.

"I'm gonna be fine, you guys," he says. 

"You'd  _ better _ ."

Jim laughs. And, because, as Sally likes to tell him, he's a piece of shit, he gives them a salute as he walks into the shuttle.

"Don't you miss me too much!"

"We'll miss you as much as we  _ damn  _ please-"

And then the shuttle door shuts.

* * *

  
  


Jim has to take a hypo as soon as they walk out. His new friend eyes him thoughtfully, but says nothing.

The air on Earth smells strange. Of course, every new planet's does when you're used to the recycled air of spaceships. The wind kind of reminds him of Vulcan, though, even if it's not nearly as dry and fortunately much less hot. Jim still suspects the humidity is going to be hell on his lungs. Sally is going to kill him if he dies of the flu like a Victorian orphan.

Jim is kind of used to the strange feeling of soil under his boots by now, but he knows he will miss the metal of a ship in a few hours. He looks up at the sky- blue, of course it's blue, he has seen the cold metal of a spaceship's ceiling and skies that are red or purple or yellow and even pink, but he still should remember his mother's planet's sky- and realizes this is the first time he's on Earth.

He was born in deep space, he knows this. It's likely he wasn't even conceived on Earth. This is the first time any of his cells has ever been on the planet that, in a different life, he should have grown up in.

Jim realizes he doesn't mind it.

"What?," says his new friend, Bones. "Have you never seen a sky before?"

"I think I've seen too many," Jim grins. He slaps Bones' back. "Well, let's go, don't you just stand there."

" _ Don't you just-  _ oh you little-"

He runs away laughing, and hopes his stay on this alien planet won't disappoint him. It's okay if it does, though.

His home will always be up there.

* * *

  
  


It's been a single day and his lungs already want to fail him.

"One  _ day  _ on-planet and a cold somehow finds its way to me," Jim mutters resentful, trying to find the correct hypo to stab his neck with. Maybe he should have packed his medical stuff in a different bag after all. "Sally is going to  _ kill  _ me."

"Is that a Seadin's skin?," a voice says from behind him with disgust, and Jim turns around ready to enter a fist fight for Jack's honor if it's the last thing he does.

Considering the state of his lungs, it might as well be.

"What about it?"

The person who had spoken, someone he's assuming it's a black woman due to a lack of any pronouns pins, looks at him like he's something she found in a public restroom. "Aren't you ashamed of contributing to a black market that skins  _ living sentient beings?" _

Jim stares at her in confusion for a few seconds. He's a genius- it's the pure mental incongruence of who he is and who the woman seems to think he's done that is slowing his mental process. "You think I got this in the  _ black market _ ? Do I look like an asshole?"

"I'm so glad you asked. Yes, you do." She crosses her arms. "If you didn't get it in the black market, where?..."

"It was a  _ gift. _ "

The woman snorts. Jim sets his jaw, his fingers seeking the scale patterns on the arms of his jacket. 

"Same thing, then, except it wasn't  _ you  _ buying from the black market. If you were a decent person, you'd give it back to their people."

And with that, she turns around and marches away.

Jim stares at her back for a few minutes. It's going to seem hilarious tomorrow, maybe even tonight when he comms the ship and watches Jack snort at the suggestion that Jim would have done something like that, but right now it tastes like bile on his tongue. He might take a page off Bones' book and throw up on someone's shoes.

"Earth is really fucking weird", he says under his breath. 

A voice speaks up from behind him. Familiar, but not too familiar, but not too not familiar.

"I concur."


End file.
